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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

How to use Osmo in the Classroom

This article was first posted on Daily Genius in April 2015

Today the field of educational
technology is literally bombarded with new ideas and devices that promise to
revolutionize the way we teach.Some of
these newcomers have strong potential and promise a unique learning experience.One such product is Osmo. Osmo is an innovative device that transforms
an iPad into an interactive classroom accessory able to add a level of
excitement that engages students in the learning process.

Osmo is made of a vertical base
for the iPad, and a reflective mirror that sits in front of the camera.These two unassuming accessories work
together to change the physical space in front of the iPad into an area of
active engagement that interact with a number of iPad apps made for Osmo.

Osmo Kit

Osmo will only set you back $79,
but for that money you get a well-designed Kit along with four Osmo apps you
can download for free.Aside from the
base and the reflective mirror, Osmo comes with a set of tangrams and two
color-coded sets of alphabet letters.This may seem simplistic at first, but these modest accessories can
guarantee hours of enjoyable learning and turn mundane and repetitive learning
activities into highly appealing and engaging lessons.

Words App

Words is the most interesting,
and the app with the highest educational value of all Osmo apps.Words has a lot of potential in the
elementary classroom and the fact that it is highly customizable makes it ideal
for all elementary grade levels, from Kindergarten to 5th
grade.The app consists of two sets of
color-coded alphabet letters that the students can use to interact with the
app.The objective is to guess and use
the correct letters in order to match the target word on the iPad’s
screen.Words does a superb job in
differentiating and offering diverse levels, which enhances the
experience.For instance, K-1 students
can start using the Junior level, while everyone else can use the standard
level that comes with the app.Even
within the standard level there are four different difficulty levels.Depending on the level you choose, words may
be single or multi-syllable words, and a picture in the background may provide
little, some, or a lot of support.

Users who own an Osmo unit can
create an account at playosmo.com, and this is where things get very
interesting.From there the teacher can
generate his/her own lists of words and pictures.The implications of this are staggering.

Due to its highly customizable
nature, Osmo allows teachers of all subjects to create their own albums,
therefore making Osmo relevant to any subject, math, reading, social studies,
or science.Creative teachers can design
spelling bee contests, math games, science vocabulary quizzes, social studies
puzzles, Cloze sentences, and the list goes on.Furthermore, at my.playosmo.com/ teachers have access to a growing
number of public albums they can download on their iPad for free, ensuring that
there is always something new to engage the students.

The newest addition to the Osmo
family, Masterpiece, is a fun and super engaging drawing app that can elevate
the excitement in any art class.The app
contains a good number of curated pictures that, when selected, transform into
drawings that you have to recreate.The
camera tracks your pencil’s every move while it guides you to follow the lines,
which allows you to be incredibly accurate while drawing.In addition, the app records in real time
every line you draw, and comprises a time-lapse video of your drawing, which is
a very neat feature.

Following in the Footsteps of
Words, Masterpiece allows the user to import his/her own pictures, opening the
door for some quite astonishing challenges.Self-portraits, familiar landscapes, and favorite pets are only some of
the things the students can interact with and draw using this truly intuitive
app.

Tangram App

Tangram is an old Chinese game made
of a square divided into seven basic geometric shapes that can be put together
to create hundreds of other shapes.Osmo’s
twist on this old game is ingenious and highly interactive.The tangram app displays a shape on the screen
and the objective is for the students to recreate this shape using the real
life tangram pieces that come with the Kit.The app is designed to adjust the difficulty level and the support it
provides to the student, therefore the teacher can differentiate lessons and
activities to meet the needs of a diverse group of students.

Although tangram is ideal for K-2
students, as it can be used to introduce students to the properties of 2- dimensional
shapes, upper elementary students can benefit from working with the app as
well.The app can be used to teach students
how to visualize 2- dimensional shapes, and to think out of the box in order to
combine commonly used shapes to create unusual forms and arrangements.

Newton App

Osmo’s doodle application easily
earns the title of the most basic app of Osmo.Newton is a game in which the objective is to draw lines on a piece of
paper placed in front of the iPad, in order to force the balls falling from the
top of the screen to hit certain targets.This is the equivalent of a pinball game played on the iPad.Although Newton falls short in providing some
strong educational value, it is still great for hand-eye coordination practice
for K-2 students, not to mention the hours of fun students can have challenging
each other.

Apple TV & Osmo

I am a strong believer of the fact that an Apple TV can make
a great classroom accessory, and I have written about
that in the past.Using Osmo in
conjunction with an Apple TV opens up a wide range of possibilities in the
classroom.One of Osmo’s greatest
strengths is its ability to make the learning experience social.However, you are still limited by the small
size of the iPad’s screen, so only a small number of students can share the
experience.Mirror the iPad to an Apple
TV and you have a very different picture.The whole class can participate and be part of a lesson, in which
physical interaction goes well beyond the usual tapping of the iPad’s
screen.That’s learning at its best!